


Halo Orbit

by ignipes



Series: Parallax [2]
Category: Panic At The Disco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-08
Updated: 2009-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon knows exactly what will happen to him if he ever goes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halo Orbit

From this distance, the churning gray clouds and endless storms on the planet's surface looked smooth and silent. The shuttle was gone, long since vanished into the atmosphere.

He couldn't hear anything. The abbot's low, soothing voice had murmured in his ear as they closed him in the suit, placed him in the shuttle, launched him into orbit, left him behind. He didn't know how many hours the man had spoken to him. Forgiveness and absolution, repentance and penitence: the abbot's words were familiar, and he had stopped listening after some time.

When the abbot asked him direct questions—"Is that what you believe, son? Is that what you want?"—he refused to answer.

He didn't know how long it had been since the abbot fell silent. It could be minutes, it could be hours. He knew he was breathing, he knew his heart was beating, but he couldn't hear anything filtering through the suit. He couldn't move his arms or legs; he couldn't turn his head.

He swallowed painfully and tried to breathe slowly. He didn't know how much time they had given him.

"Hello?" His voice sounded hollow and weak. "Abbot? Are you there?"

There was no answer.

"Abbot? I want to listen now. I'm ready to listen."

He was turning slowly: gradually the planet and its sun rotated out of sight and he could see nothing but the distant stars.

"I'm ready now," he said. His voice seemed to echo back at him, trapped in the smooth shell of his spacesuit. "I'm sorry. I'm ready."

He didn't even know if they were listening. He could feel panic gathering in him. He was breathing too quickly, wasting air. His throat hurt and his eyes stung.

He didn't know what they wanted to hear, so he began to babble. He apologized, he prayed, he confessed to everything they wanted of him. They didn't answer. He sang every song he knew and made up dozens he'd never sung before. He shouted at the abbot and the monks and every novice on every Fidelis moon. But there was still nothing but silence, so he cursed his family by name, starting with his father and mother and working down the lines to every distant cousin. When he ran out of names, he prayed again: reciting the chants and invocations he'd known since childhood, the words ingrained in his memory.

Every once in a while he stopped to listen, and he asked, "Abbot? Can you hear me?"

There was never an answer.

-

"Brendon. Hey, Brendon. Wake up. Come on, wake—"

Brendon's eyes snapped open. He blinked rapidly several times, confused. He expected to see the stormy gray planet before him, but there was nothing but a dark room and a figure leaning over him, shaking him gently.

The dream slipped away, and his mind snapped into clarity. The little house, the room in the back, the warm bed. Jon was sitting up beside him, and as Brendon's eyes adjusted to the dark he could see the worried expression on his face.

"You awake now?" Jon asked. He was whispering. He didn't let go of Brendon's shoulder. "You were talking in your sleep again."

"Yeah." His voice sounded like a rasp. Brendon cleared his throat. "Sorry." He sat up, brushing Jon's hand away, and dropped his feet to the floor.

"Here." Jon touched his arm and handed him a glass of water.

Brendon took it and drank. The room was cold, and he couldn't hear the low hum of the heating system. The power was out again; it happened every few days. The colonists had lived on East for two years, but they still couldn't figure out how to keep the power generators running reliably through the harsh, bitter winters.

Jon rubbed his hand up and down Brendon's back. "Bad dream?"

"Bad memory," Brendon said. He regretted it immediately when Jon's hand stilled on his back.

"Do you want to—"

"No. It's fine. It's nothing." Brendon set the glass down, tucked his legs under the blankets and laid down again, curled onto his side with his back to Jon. "Why is it so fucking cold in here?"

Jon was silent for a moment then he said, his voice carefully light, "I think it's snowing again."

"It's always snowing," Brendon grumbled.

He felt the mattress dip as Jon laid down beside him. "They should have picked a better planet," Jon said. He sounded tired, and Brendon felt a pang of guilt for waking him up. Jon spent long hours every day outside with the other engineers in the colony, trying to keep the generators running through the storms. "A nice sunny one," Jon added through a yawn. "A planet with summer all the time."

"Yeah. That would be nice." Brendon closed his eyes. Through the blankets his feet brushed against Clover curled in a warm lump at the foot of the bed. He wanted to roll over and curl close to Jon, tuck his head against Jon's shoulder and fall asleep listening to him breathe, but he didn't move. He didn't know how Jon would react. They slept next to each other every night, arguing over who hogged the blankets and who got the best pillow, talking quietly about unimportant things before falling asleep, but there was nothing more.

Brendon stayed awake for a long while after Jon fell back to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the gray planet slipping out of sight and the empty space surrounding him.

-

Brendon spent a few hours the next day helping Patrick in the village. There was always a lot to do, and Brendon liked working with Patrick. Patrick never asked questions Brendon didn't want to answer, never demanded to know how Brendon knew the things he did. All he did was figure out what Brendon was good at, put him to work, and leave him alone.

Jon and Spencer were out with some of the others trying to fix the power system again, so when Brendon returned to their little house at the edge of the village in late afternoon, only Ryan was there. He was in bed, but his eyes opened to slits when Brendon came in.

"What time is it?" Ryan asked. His voice was rough and strained. He'd had another operation two days ago and had slept through most of yesterday. He kept assuring them - and Pete and Patrick agreed - that he was getting better, that every operation helped, but it was hard to tell just looking at him. His skin was sickly pale and his eyes were sunken, bruised with dark circles. "Where's Spencer?"

Brendon sat on the edge of the bed. "It's almost dinnertime. Spencer's out with Joe's crew fixing the solar generator."

"It's cold," Ryan murmured, his eyes fluttering shut again.

Brendon tugged the blanket up over his shoulders. "I'll start the fire," he said. He went over to the hearth and began piling kindling on the grate.

Their first few weeks on East, he hadn't understood why there were fireplaces and stoves in the houses. The only people Brendon had ever seen use actual fires for heat were the homeless when he was living on the streets on Aventine. But with the exception of the infirmary, East barely had the technology of a phase one colony, and the fireplaces took over when the power failed. Ryan and Spencer grumbled, but Brendon didn't mind it so much. The firelight was bright and comforting, and when they kept the door between the rooms open it was enough to keep them all warm through the night.

The kindling began to crackle and the logs finally caught. Brendon stood and brushed his hands on his pants. "Better?"

Ryan hummed in agreement. "Come here," he said, patting the bed beside him. He had new hands now, gleaming silver and remarkably agile, and he still stared at them and flexed his fingers in wonder when he thought nobody was looking. "I'm bored. Keep me company."

Brendon rolled his eyes but obliged. He kicked his shoes off and slithered under the blankets beside Ryan, tugging half of the pillow over to share. "I don't think it's ever going to stop snowing," he said. Through the window he could see the flakes still falling, weighing down the branches of the trees as dusk fell.

"Pete says this is normal," Ryan said. He was tapping his fingers rapidly on the blanket; Brendon didn't think he even knew he was doing it. "He says that's why they chose this planet in the first place. No other colony ever made it through the winters."

Brendon snorted. "Pete's definition of normal is not the same as most people's."

Ryan smiled fondly. "Yeah. I guess not."

Brendon reached over and took Ryan's hand, held it until his fingers stilled. The metal was warmer than it looked, smooth and almost slick, and Brendon wondered if he was imagining the tiny, almost imperceptible sparks he could feel on his fingertips. He didn't know anything about Ryan and Pete's history besides the very little Ryan had told him, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know more. He wasn't sure it mattered. Before, Brendon had believed Ryan when he said he wanted to kill the people who made him into a cyborg. He knew Ryan had once believed it too, but it was different now. Spencer didn't entirely trust Pete, but he never argued about the work he did. And Ashlee treated Ryan with kindness like any other friend, even when her husband acted like Ryan was his greatest creation and most challenging puzzle and long lost beloved all rolled into one.

Brendon decided he would probably never understand the relationship between a mad scientist and his cyborg patients. He rubbed his thumb gently over the metal curve of Ryan's mechanical wrist and said, "Do you remember when I first met you guys?"

"Yes?" said Ryan, clearly puzzled. "Of course I do. Why?"

"I don't know. I was just thinking about it." Brendon shrugged, his lower shoulder moving against the bed. "Because of the cold, I guess. It was so fucking cold on Aventine in winter. And I didn't..."

"You were scared of us," Ryan said.

"Yeah," Brendon agreed. There wasn't much reason to learn to trust anybody on the streets of Aventine—or in the political circles on Eden. "Mostly you."

He felt Ryan tense, but Ryan didn't pull his hand away. "I know. I knew then too. It's okay."

"It's really not," Brendon said. "I was—when I left, I told myself I wasn't going to believe any of the shit they tried to make me believe, that was the whole reason I was leaving. But some things... Have you ever heard of a planet called Casicani?"

Ryan hesitated a moment too long before answering, "No."

He was lying, but Brendon let him. "It's a prison planet. One of the biggest. Mostly for dissidents and traitors. The ones they don't execute." Brendon had spent a lot of time wondering just how Spencer had pissed off the Alliance so much he was on their execution list rather than their deserter imprisonment/reeducation list, but he hadn't yet found the courage to ask. "But it's where they send cyborgs too, the ones who survive the—the dismantling."

"I wouldn't have," Ryan said. He was still holding onto Brendon's hand. He didn't sound angry. "If your friends hadn't rescued us, I'd be dead now."

That was how Ryan and Spencer and Jon referred to the aliens now: "your friends," like Brendon had done something special to get their help, like he'd had anything to do with the rescue at all. He had tried to explain that all he'd done was feel their presence and beg for help when he had the slightest, most fleeting hope that somebody might be listening, but he didn't know if they believed him.

"I went to Casicani once," Brendon said. "One of my brothers was doing an inspection. I was, I don't know, maybe twelve? My father sent me with him to—well, actually, it was punishment. I had this tutor I really hated because he was always making me study military strategies and politics and stuff when all I wanted to do was music lessons and I—I was an awful kid. I threw tantrums until the guy finally left, and my dad decided it was time for me to learn..."

Brendon trailed off. He withdrew his hand from Ryan's and rolled away.

"Brendon?"

"Never mind," he said. He took a few slow breaths. "It's not important."

Ryan was silent for a couple of minutes. Clover stalked in from the other room and looked around imperiously before settling on the hearth, her eyes slitted and her tail flicking lazily. Brendon watched her nap and waited for Ryan to speak.

"I'm not going to say it's not weird," Ryan said finally. "Because it is. It's really fucking weird to hear you talk about music lessons and traveling with your brother—and about your dad, knowing who he is." Ryan paused, and Brendon waited. "And I get why you've never talked about your family before, not even to mention them, because if it's weird for me it must be a thousand times harder for you. But if you want to... Are you scared of us now? Do you think we'll—we're not going to get you mixed up with your family. You left them."

Brendon rolled onto his side again and reached for Ryan's hand again, held on tight. "I was an awful brat when I was a kid," he said. "So it was punishment, right? A trip to Casicani is a really fucking boring way to spend a few weeks, but I had to go. I didn't even really see anything. The spaceport and the base, they're closed in this huge dome. The planet has a stable atmosphere, so the only reason they have this dome is to keep the prisoners out. There are no guards except at the entrances to the dome. They just... they just drop people down on the surface. They tag the important ones so they can find them if they have to, but most people... They don't survive very long."

"Especially not if they're missing mechanical body parts," Ryan said.

"Yeah. Especially then." Brendon shifted a little, sliding closer to rest his head on Ryan's shoulder, careful to avoid where he knew Ryan was hurting. "They have this big room in the base where they monitor all the tagged prisoners. It's like being inside a globe of the entire planet, and there are these little lights all around. I guess they monitor them by satellite. I didn't pay attention to how they did it." He remembered craning his neck up to look at the specks of light around them, tiny and bright like stars on the ceiling. "The base commander, he kept pointing out different prisoners, telling my brother who they were. The famous ones, the worst criminals. He kept saying 'he's a mass murderer, he's a traitor.' I guess that's the kind of thing prison wardens brag about. But for some of them..."

"What?"

Brendon said, "For some of them, the warden didn't say 'he', he said 'it.' I didn't know what he meant—there are no cyborgs on Eden. Not one, anywhere. I don't even know if there are any in the Inner Ring. We just never... all the time I was growing up, I never knew anything except they were bad. Wrong. And the prisoners, they didn't even have mechanical parts anymore, but it didn't matter. The warden wouldn't call them 'he' and my brother wouldn't either and I thought, for a long time, even after I met you, I thought that was..."

"Right," Ryan said. "You thought it was right."

Brendon nodded.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Brendon pushed himself up on his elbows so he could meet Ryan's eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. His voice cracked on the word; he swallowed and went on, "I'm sorry, and I wanted you to know, and I know I don't deserve—"

"Stop," Ryan said. He squeezed Brendon's hand and let go, and reached up to rub his hand over his face tiredly. "There's nothing to forgive. It's fine."

"I—okay." Brendon nodded. He sat up and smoothed the blanket and offered a weak smile. Ryan watched him with an unreadable expression. "Okay."

He was saved from having to say anything else by the sound of voices and footsteps outside the door. Spencer and Jon came in on a gust of cold wind, wrapped up in heavy coats and scarves crusted with snow and ice, only their faces uncovered. Spencer pushed the door shut and they both began stripping off their layers immediately.

"I can't believe how fucking cold this stupid planet is," Spencer said, dropping his hat and gloves on the table by the door. "Who the fuck thought living here would be a good idea?"

"We lit a fire to welcome you home," Ryan said. He tried to push himself into a sitting position, and Brendon hooked an arm around his shoulder to help him. "Well, Brendon did, but I supervised."

Spencer grinned at them. "We were hoping you would. Jon said—Jon?"

"Yeah," Jon said distractedly. He had dropped his gloves on the floor and he was staring at his hands. "I'm just going to..." He trailed off as he wandered into the next room.

"Is he okay?" Ryan asked.

"It's been a long day," Spencer said after a moment. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over to give Ryan a kiss. "How are you feeling?"

Brendon slipped off the bed and went into the other room. Jon was standing at the foot of the bed, still staring at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. "Jon?" Brendon asked, stepping closer to him. "Are you okay?"

"It's just the cold," Jon said. He shook his head and exhaled an humorless little laugh. "I can't, um, after we're out there for a few hours, I can't—but it's just the cold."

"Yes," Brendon said quickly. "It's just the cold." He grabbed Jon's hands and began rubbing them between his own. "You're fine. You can feel this, right? It's only because it's so fucking cold out there, that's all, but you're fine, you're—" He broke off, aware that he was babbling. Jon's face was flushed from the cold and his hair was messy and they were standing so close together, all Brendon wanted to do was close the distance between them and—and touch his face, hold him until the tension drained out of his shoulders and the fear vanished from his eyes.

But instead he tugged Jon toward the door. "Come on. Sit by the fire."

Jon followed him without a word. He still looked anxious, but Brendon pretended not to notice, just like he pretended not to notice how Jon had changed since they'd arrived on East. There were only little things—Jon hated silence now, and he avoided bland foods, and his hands were always unconsciously touching everything as if to reassure himself he still could—but he was embarrassed whenever anybody noticed.

So Brendon didn't do anything except say, "Sit down. You're shivering like crazy," and sit beside Jon on the stone hearth. Their shoulders and knees brushed together, and he was still holding Jon's hands between his own. On the other end of the hearth Clover glared at them for disturbing her nap, turned in one neat circle and went to sleep again.

Jon hunched his shoulders and leaned against Brendon. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"No problem." Brendon looked up and met Spencer's amused glance across the room. He shrugged and smiled, and Spencer rolled his eyes. "So are we going to have power all night now? What did you guys do today?"

Spencer took the question for the distraction it was and started talking about the problems they'd encountered fixing the power system. After a minute or two Jon chimed in, and Brendon half-listened while they argued over their plan for the next day and the repairs they needed to make.

When Jon finally stopped shivering and he and Spencer lapsed into a brief silence, Brendon let go of Jon's hands and stood up. "Can I—" He licked his lips and took a deep breath. "Can I talk to you guys? About—it's something, I have to tell you something."

Ryan and Spencer exchanged a glance, but it was Jon who said, "What is it?"

Brendon paced the length of the room twice before stopping by the window. It was still snowing outside and the path to their house was nearly covered, but he could see the warm yellow lights of the village through the trees. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes.

"Brendon?" Ryan said. "What is it?" He sounded like he already knew the answer.

Brendon didn't open his eyes. "I want to tell you why I left Eden."

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Brendon heard footsteps behind him, and a warm hand touched his arm. "You don't have to," Spencer said. "We know you—"

"I want to," Brendon said.

He stepped away from the window, but instead of letting him go Spencer pulled him closer, his arm settled comfortably around Brendon's shoulders. "Then we'll listen," Spencer said.

Brendon leaned into him gratefully and let Spencer lead him over to the wooden bench against the wall. "I, um, I don't know where to start," Brendon admitted after a moment. He had thought about it thousands of times, ever since he'd first decided he could trust Ryan and Spencer and Brent. He had thought it would be easier to explain now that they already knew. Ryan and Jon were watching him, and Spencer rubbed his arm reassuringly, so Brendon took a deep breath and said, "Have you ever heard of a planet called Eriadne?"

Jon and Ryan looked blank, but Spencer said, "Phase one colony in the Geriat cluster, right? They had some kind of medicinal botanicals or something, a lot of unusual and valuable stuff, that's why it was colonized."

"Right." Brendon swallowed. His throat felt dry and painful. "The colony was established by independent companies, a research consortium, and my father, he wanted to create a treaty with them to—well, for the usual reasons. To control them. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal. The colonists weren't hostile or rebellious. The consortium was loyal. So my dad sent me instead of one of my brothers. It was my first official action, you know, 'Hey, you're an adult now, go trick these colonists into surrendering their freedom and all of their descendants' too.'" Brendon ran his hand through his hair. "I was supposed to feel like it was this huge honor, getting that kind of responsibility, but mostly I was just annoyed. I didn't care about going to some remote, insect-infested jungle planet to sit through boring meetings for days on end."

"It got in the way of your music lessons," Ryan said. When Brendon glanced at him, he was smiling slightly.

Brendon exhaled a huff of laughter and felt something unknot in his chest. "Yeah. I was a stupid kid."

Spencer shook him gently and said, "Hey," and Jon asked, "How old were you?"

"Fourteen," said Brendon. "Old enough to be an official representative."

"Old enough to fight," Spencer said.

"That too." Brendon looked down at his hands twisted in his lap. "But I went. I didn't have any choice. That wasn't the kind of thing I could refuse, you know?"

"No," Ryan said. "We really don't know."

Brendon looked at him. "I guess you don't. But it doesn't matter. I went. Eriadne is a weird planet. There isn't any solid land, just oceans and jungle swamps. They don't—didn't even have a regular spaceport, so the only way to get to the surface was to use a space plane modified to land on water. The whole colony—there was just one town—it was built on floating and hanging platforms in these huge trees. They were the biggest trees I'd ever seen, even bigger that the ancient groves on Eden."

Brendon remembered the shock of the hot, muggy air when he stepped out of the plane and boarded the flat-bottomed boat, the eerie glow of the town lights filtering through the ever-present mist and choking trees and vines. Every noise had felt both muffled and too loud in the suffocating atmosphere, and he was always surrounded by the sound of water dripping and lapping and flowing. Once he had arrived in the town he didn't properly see the sky again until he left; there were no breaks in the canopy and the uppermost branches were so high they were hidden by the fog. He got lost on the labyrinth of platforms and rope bridges and ladders more times than he could count. By his third day on the planet, he had begun to see it as something of a game, whether he could get from one place to another without taking a wrong turn or asking for help. But he grew accustomed to the constant presence of bizarre, colorful creatures in his room at night, the bitter algae taste of all the food and water, the feeling of always being drenched in sweat.

"It was pretty incredible," Brendon said. "I liked it there. It was obvious the colonists all thought I was just a kid playing at being a ambassador—I was, I couldn't blame them. But they weren't mean about it. They were all scientists, so as long as I pretended to be interested in what they were doing, they were really nice to me. And after a while I wasn't pretending, because it really was interesting. Eriadne has a completely unique ecology, when you really look at it. It doesn't have any real analogues on any other planets, and—well. That's not important. It's not like I could decide to stay there and live in a treehouse and study flowers and bugs and carnivorous vines for the rest of my life, but I kind of wanted to. It was the first place I'd ever been where I didn't feel like I had to worry about being assassinated everywhere I went."

Brendon shrugged, and Spencer squeezed his shoulder lightly. "What happened?"

"There was this woman, one of the scientists who studied the underwater ecologies. Her name was Chandra. She spent more time in the water than out of it. She was always building underwater vehicles and diving gear and—and all kinds of things like that, I didn't understand half of it. I think it if wasn't illegal she would have had herself modified with cybernetic gills."

"Like Yuri," Ryan said, naming one of the cyborg men who lived on East.

Brendon said, "Yeah. She would have liked that. I didn't even know her that well, but Chandra really liked to talk about her research. They all did. I think they got used to me hanging around all the time. But she really got carried away sometimes, and she told me something—something she shouldn't have told me."

"What was it?" Spencer asked.

"There was a city," Brendon said.

"You mean—"

"An underwater city," Brendon went on. "It was in the deep part of the ocean. Abandoned, but still intact. And not—it wasn't like it had been built on land and then submerged. Chandra thought it had been built underwater in the first place."

"Not by humans," Jon said. His voice was hoarse and quiet.

"No." Brendon cleared his throat. "Chandra realized almost as soon as she told me that she shouldn't have. I was—it was supposed to be my _duty_ to tell my father about it, but I knew if I did he would empty the colony and destroy the city and it would be like it never existed. And I wasn't even really thinking about what it meant in terms of... the existence other species and all of that. That was—I don't know. I just didn't think about it. I was only thinking that I'd made friends on Eriadne and I didn't want to ruin everything they loved, all the work they were doing."

"What did you do?" Ryan asked.

"Nothing," said Brendon. "I got the treaty and I went back to Eden. I didn't say a word about the underwater city. I promised Chandra I wouldn't. But it didn't matter."

Spencer asked, "Why not?"

"My father already knew," Brendon said. He suddenly felt very tired and his eyes stung. "He had a spy on the colony before I even got there, working as an assistant to one of the scientists, somebody who knew about Chandra's work."

"You didn't know about the spy?" Ryan said.

"That was the point," Brendon said quietly.

He looked down at his hands. Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Jon said, "He was _testing_ you?"

Brendon spread his hands in a resigned gesture. "I should have known. I _did_ know, I guess, but I—I let myself forget. I shouldn't have. That's how it..." He trailed off.

He could tell them how it had always been that way, for as long as he could remember: everything had been a test. Who he spoke to at important dinners, what he read and how he spent his time, the answers he gave to every seemingly trivial question, when he argued and when he didn't, all of it was a test, and all that Brendon knew for sure was that he had always failed to measure up. Eriadne was no different, and he had known it the moment his father summoned him to the Chancellor's Hall in the palace on Eden and he'd found his entire family waiting but nobody else. No guards, no servants, none of his father's advisors, just his parents in their tall-backed chairs and his brothers and sisters in a line.

"That's how it always was," Brendon said. "I should've remembered. But I didn't, and I got it wrong."

"Is that when you left?" Ryan asked.

Brendon looked up at him. "Not then. My father said I could be absolved if I wanted. But that wasn't... I didn't really matter if I wanted it or not. Nobody ever gets a choice about that."

Ryan asked, confused, "About what?"

But Brendon felt Spencer tense and his arm tightened around his shoulders. He said incredulously, "They—but that's—your _own father_ did that to you? How could he—is that what you mean?"

Brendon suddenly felt like laughing, but all he managed was a short, harsh breath. "Spence, my father destroys entire planets because he doesn't like it when their leaders disagree with him."

"But..." Spencer was still holding onto Brendon too tightly, but Brendon didn't mind. " _Fuck_ , Brendon."

"What are you talking about?" Ryan asked. "What happened?"

Jon looked as confused as Ryan. "What did he do?"

"He sent you to the moons, right?" Spencer said. "To the monasteries?"

Brendon nodded. "Yeah. The Fidelis moons," he explained in response to Ryan and Jon's questioning looks. "There's a long and noble tradition on Eden of sending people to one of the monastery moons when he needs to be— _rehabilitated_. It's—I guess if you're good and you behave yourself it's probably not so bad. A lot of boring chores and contemplating what it means to be human and sitting still and being quiet."

"I can't imagine you were very good at that," Jon said. He looked angry and slightly ill.

"No," Brendon agreed. "I was awful." He could still feel the chill of the constant rain and dripping stone, the ache in his muscles from kneeling on the hard floor for hours on end, the restlessness and loneliness that came from not being allowed to speak to anyone for days. "But I thought if I played along and convinced them I was sorry enough, I could leave and things would go back to normal. But I wasn't very convincing. The abbot decided I needed to... to spend some time in solitary meditation. That's what they call it." Jon and Ryan were still confused, but Brendon's throat felt tight and he took a few long, slow breaths, trying to calm himself down.

He felt a wave of relief when Spencer said, "I've only heard rumors. A lot of people don't think they even do it anymore, but... They put you in a spacesuit, right? Put you in orbit and leave you there?"

"Yeah." Brendon squeezed his eyes shut for a second; he could still see the stormy gray planet below. "The suits are designed to keep you alive for days, weeks. Longer. However long they think it takes. They talk to you at first—tell you to admit your crimes, to ask for forgiveness. But eventually they stop and it's... it's quiet. They're still listening, but they don't answer."

Nobody said anything at first. Then Spencer turned slightly and wrapped his arms around Brendon in a tight, engulfing hug. Brendon tucked his face against Spencer's shoulder and clung to him gratefully. When Spencer loosened his grip, Brendon cleared his throat and said, "After that—after I went back to Eden, that's when I left. I went to Gihon for a while, then to Aventine."

It wasn't that simple. But he could tell them another day about the months after he returned when he had tried to be the good son his parents wanted, when he did as he was told and tried to believe he wasn't lying to himself from the moment he woke in the morning to the time he went to sleep, when he was agreeable and obedient and quiet and penitent, and how none of it had made any difference. They would never trust him again, and he had slowly realized he didn't want them to.

So he left. He went with one of his brothers on a routine inspection trip to the Inner Ring planet of Gihon, and he walked out of their family residence one afternoon with nothing but the clothes on his back and a sack full of expensive trinkets he intended to sell at the unregulated market in the slums surrounding the Gihon spaceport. It took him several weeks and the traders cheated him outrageously, but he collected enough money to buy fake documents and passage on a merchant vessel to Aventine. All the interminable meetings about interplanetary fraud and smuggling his father had forced him to sit through proved surprisingly useful.

He didn't panic until the ship landed on Aventine and he realized he had absolutely nowhere to go, no one to turn to, no plan and no money. He didn't even have a coat, and winter was falling in a sweep of bitter, howling storms the likes of which he'd never seen on Eden. Every day for his first two months he went to the Chancellor's building in the center of the city, and every day he made it as far as the locked gates before he stopped. The guards never recognized him; they ignored him like they ignored all the other bedraggled beggars gathered outside the impenetrable fence. He never tried to go in or tell them who he was: he always turned away before he attracted any attention. Eventually he stopped going to that part of the city at all. There were better neighborhoods for begging or stealing food and money.

"How long were you on Aventine before we met you?" Ryan asked.

"A couple of years," Brendon said. "It's an easy place to hide. There are so many off-record people living on the streets nobody even notices them anymore." After a second he added, "It's a good thing Brent found me when you did. I don't know if I would have made it through another winter." He knew from their expressions Ryan and Spencer were thinking the same thing. Brendon smiled crookedly and said to Jon, "They spent about a month force-feeding me soup and tea and nutrient pills." Jon didn't say anything, and Brendon ducked his head awkwardly. "They—you guys saved my life, and I didn't—I mean, at first, but later, I didn't want to lie to you, but I thought—"

Spencer shook him gently. "Don't you dare try to apologize for that."

Brendon swallowed painfully and nodded. "Okay. Not for that."

He looked at each of them in turn. He couldn't tell what they were thinking, and he knew they probably had questions. But before they could say anything he stood up shakily and said, "It's probably time for dinner. I'll go get something. You guys can stay here."

Jon stood up too. "I'll go with you. Help you carry stuff."

Brendon didn't try to argue.

"Bring back something good," Ryan said.

Jon pointed at him. "For you, Ross, we'll bring back whatever Patrick says you're allowed to eat."

Ryan made a face. "Patrick is _mean_. I want something I can actually taste."

"How about something that won't send your digestive tract into systemic failure?" Spencer suggested.

Ryan sighed dramatically. "I take that back. You're all mean."

Brendon said, "We'll find something with some flavor for you, I promise."

Ryan smiled at him. "Thank you."

They wrapped themselves up in their coats and scarves and hats and gloves and went out into the night. Jon and Spencer's tracks from earlier were covered were only faint indentations along the path, covered with fresh snow. The cold stung Brendon's face and shocked his throat when he inhaled, and his eyes began watering almost immediately.

About ten paces away from the door he slipped and threw his arms out for balance. Jon caught his elbow and said, "Careful," his voice muffled by his scarf.

"Thanks," Brendon said. Jon didn't let go of his arm as they started walking again. The lights of the village glowed warmly through the trees, and the night was quiet and peaceful. It felt like there was nothing in the world except the snow and the trees and the village, and them, picking their way carefully down the slippery path. "It would be nice here if it wasn't so fucking cold," Brendon said.

Jon laughed. "It's not so bad," he said. Then he went on, almost shyly, "I know you're probably tired of talking by now, so you can tell me to fuck off if you want, but can I ask you something?"

Brendon was tempted to say no, not now, ask Jon to wait until tomorrow. But his curiosity got the best of him. "What is it?"

"What happened to Eriadne?"

That wasn't what Brendon was expecting. "Oh. I think it was pretty much like I expected. I don't know the details. I didn't exactly get to hear about the news when I was in the monastery. But I heard the colony was evacuated. They said it was some kind of sickness, something indigenous they couldn't cure, and the entire planet's been under absolute quarantine ever since. They probably destroyed the underwater city, but that's not the kind of thing that goes into official records."

"I guess not," Jon said.

He sounded distracted and pensive, but Brendon didn't ask what he was thinking.

They walked the rest of the way to the village in silence. Jon didn't let go of Brendon's arm until they were just outside the door of the dining hall. Light and noise were spilling out into the night, and people shouted cheerful greetings when they went inside.

-

They passed the rest of the evening the way they did most nights: eating dinner together, talking about work they were doing around the village, gossiping about the colonists. Brendon sat on the floor by the fire and stroked Clover while the others talked. He felt in some vague, undefined way that everything ought to be different, even mundane things more momentous now that he'd told them and he had no more important secrets to carry, but it felt like an ordinary night.

They talked until Ryan began to fall asleep in the middle of his sentences and Spencer yawned and reminded Jon that they needed to be up early in the morning. Brendon went into the other room first and got ready for bed slowly. It wasn't quite as warm in there, but the power was still on and at least there was no ice on the inside of the windows. He heard the other guys still talking in the other room and wondered if they were talking about him. He decided he didn't mind if they were.

He was standing awkwardly beside the bed when Jon came in a few minutes later and shut the door. Jon looked at him for a long moment, ran a hand through his hair, and said, "I guess now I know what your nightmares are about."

Brendon shuddered and hugged himself. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Hey, no." Jon stepped closer. "I know. No more talking. I didn't mean..." He put both hands on Brendon's shoulders, then he made a small, frustrated sound and wrapped his arms around Brendon in a tight hug. "It's okay," he murmured. "It's okay."

Brendon held himself tense for a moment before relaxing. He leaned into Jon and hugged him back, holding him close and burying his face in Jon's neck.

Jon rubbed his hand slowly up and down Brendon's back. He leaned back a little to meet Brendon's eyes. His gaze was intense and inscrutable, and Brendon felt his face grow hot. "Jon?"

Jon traced his thumb along the line of Brendon's jaw. "Is this... can I?"

Before Brendon could answer, Jon leaned forward to kiss him, just as quick and hesitant as he had been that day by the river right after they arrived. When he pulled away he looked worried and hopeful, and his hand was gripping Brendon's shoulder tightly.

"Yes," Brendon said. His heart was hammering but he licked his lips and said again, "Yes. It's— _yes_." He closed his eyes but he could feel Jon's beard tickling his cheek. He slid one hand up Jon's back to tangle it in his hair, let the other slip down to brush at the skin of Jon's waist, under his shirt.

For a moment they stood like that, eyes closed and foreheads pressed together. Then Jon said, "That's good, because I really, _really_ want—"

Brendon could feel Jon smiling when he kissed him.

-

Brendon dreamed about the stormy planet again, but this time when Jon shook him awake he didn't roll away. Jon hooked his arm over Brendon's chest and nuzzled closer, muttering quiet, nonsense reassurances.

Brendon closed his eyes and concentrated on Jon's soothing voice, his warm bare skin and the scrape of his beard against Brendon's chest, and he was asleep again within minutes.

-

They were still curled close together when Brendon woke in the morning. It was still dark, and he felt almost uncomfortably warm under the blankets with Jon pressed close to his back. Brendon disentangled himself carefully and sat up. Through the window he could see snow still falling, and there was a light under the door to the other room. He heard low voices and the creak of floorboards. Spencer and Ryan were already awake.

"Hey," Jon mumbled, reaching out blindly to tug Brendon back. "Where are you going?"

Brendon let himself be tugged and fell back onto the bed. He turned to face Jon and couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face. Jon's hair was sticking up in every direction and there was a red line on his face from a pillow crease, and he looked thoroughly disgruntled at being awake before dawn. "It's still snowing," Brendon whispered.

Jon groaned and slid closer to hide his face against Brendon's shoulder. "I don't want to go out in the cold."

 _So don't_ , Brendon wanted to say. _Stay here with me_. He trailed his fingers over the bare skin of Jon's back and said, "I'll warm you up when you get back."

Jon pushed himself up on one elbow and looked down at Brendon. "Promise?"

"I promise," Brendon said with a solemn nod.

Jon smiled slyly and leaned down. They traded soft, easy kisses for a while, warm hands sliding over warm skin, until Jon sighed loudly and rolled away. He stood up and began pattering around the room. Brendon sat up in the nest of mussed blankets and watched him dress, and he laughed when Jon did up the buttons on his shirt crooked the first time and had to do it again.

When he sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and boots, Brendon crawled over to hug him from behind. Jon leaned back into him, and Brendon kissed his neck and said, "Stay warm today."

Jon sighed again. "Stupid fucking winter."

He stood up and took two steps toward the door, then turned and came back. He bent over and pressed a quick kiss to Brendon's temple. "See you later," he said.

He left, shutting the door behind him. Brendon heard the others talking for a couple of minutes before the front door opened and shut, and it was quiet again. He climbed out of bed, yawned and stretched, looked for a pair of pants to pull on. He didn't bother with a shirt or shoes yet—for once the heat hadn't gone off during the night and the little house was cozy—but he went about picking up the clothes they'd discarded the night before.

When he went into the other room, Ryan was awake and sitting up in bed. And, to Brendon's surprise, he was dressed.

"Going somewhere?" Brendon asked.

Ryan shrugged. "Pete wants to make some adjustments. I guess somebody will come up later to help me down to the infirmary." Brendon could hear the frustration in his voice. Ryan still had trouble walking on his repaired legs and feet even with help, and he would never be able to manage with so much snow on the ground.

Brendon knelt by the fire to put some more logs on. "You want me to come down and keep you company?" He knew how much Ryan hated the endless check-ups and adjustments and modifications, and how it was a little bit easier for him to get through with somebody distracting him.

"You don't have to," Ryan said.

Brendon took that as a yes. "I know. I'll come anyway." He jabbed at the fire with the poker and glanced over his shoulder. Ryan was watching him with a tiny smile playing on his lips. "What?"

"You're humming."

Brendon felt himself flush. "So?"

Ryan snickered. "So did you sleep well last night?"

Brendon thought about making a face, but he decided instead to lift his chin and say, "As a matter of fact, I did. Very well. Thank you for asking."

The snicker turned into a genuine laugh. "That's okay. Thanks to you, Spencer owes me now."

"Do I even want to know?"

"He thought you guys would get together after we left Tharsis, but I bet it would take you a lot longer to figure it out." Ryan smoothed his hand over the blankets and looked smug. "I haven't decided yet what he owes me. I'll have to think of something suitable."

"You..." Brendon pointed the poker at Ryan. "I can't believe you made a _bet_. You guys are terrible friends."

"We try." But Ryan's expression turned serious, and he said, "Are you okay?"

Brendon set the poker aside and went to sit beside Ryan on the bed. He could feel Ryan watching him, but he stared straight ahead, into the fire. "Yes," he said after a moment. "I am. I needed to tell you. It's okay."

"Do you ever think about going back?"

Brendon looked at Ryan sharply.

"Did you think about it when we were captured?" Ryan asked, his voice low and nervous, scared of the answer. "Did you think—"

"No," Brendon said. He shook his head resolutely, but the fear didn't fade from Ryan's eyes right away. "No. Never. Not like that. Sometimes I—I miss some things. Some of them are really stupid. I don't know. But there was this waterfall in one of the gardens around the palace and I used to go there to hide after I fought with—this is really stupid, but sometimes I wish I could see it again, just to see if it's still there like I remember."

"I don't think that's stupid," Ryan said. He reached over to take Brendon's hand.

Brendon said, "And I miss my brothers and sisters. Or I miss who they used to be, or who I thought they were when I was too young to know we were anything other than a family. And my mom, sometimes, even though she's... She used to sing to me when I was little." He took a steadying breath. "But I don't want to go back. I can't. I _won't_."

"Good." Ryan squeezed his hand and leaned over to rest his head on Brendon's shoulder. "You're ours now."

Brendon held on tight and blinked rapidly. Through the window the day was brightening and the snow was still falling. Ryan's metallic fingers were warm and smooth, sparking gently against Brendon's skin.

"I guess I am," Brendon said.


End file.
